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Saturday, 31 January 2009

Toy Safety Directive. The outcome is a tough, but workable approach to toy safety standards. This result is especially important for SME toy manufacturers, who make up 80% of the European toy industry.

Play is essential to children’s healthy development and learning. Children use play to actively construct knowledge, meet social/emotional needs, and acquire life skills. The content of their play comes from their own experiences. Because of the pervasive influence of the electronic media — TV, movies, videos, DVDs, computers, video games — children spend more time sitting in front of a screen and less time playing creatively with each other. These changes in today’s childhood are undermining play.

Parents are constantly faced with decisions about what toys to buy and what toys to avoid. The influence of high-powered marketing and popular culture interfere with thoughtful decision-making at the toy store.

This guide is intended to help adults promote children’s creative and constructive play by making informed choices about toys, and by working with others at home, school, and in the community to promote positive play and toys.

I love Ugly Dolls -- they're plushy and soft, sure, but they're also a nice antidote to the usual super-sweet kid stuffed toy. Because they're ugly, see! And I have boys, which means that we don't have a lot going on at my house in the "doll" category, other than the Uglys. And I'm not the only parent of boys who has fallen for the Ugly Dolls -- Donald McNeil wrote a piece for last spring's New York Times where he pointed out that "there is no doubt that there is something preternatural about the boy-Ugly bond."

Walking into a toy store these days feels like walking into the movie Toy Story: it seems as if all of the toys have come to life. Start talking to a teddy bear, and it talks back to you. Sing a song to the bear, and it starts dancing.

The technology is amazing. But are these toys really what's best for children?

The issue is not whether toys should include the latest technology, but rather what types of play activities are encouraged by the toys. Unfortunately, most of today's high-tech toys squeeze creativity out of children's play.

This is not an idle academic concern. There is a growing recognition that creative thinking is the key to success in today's fast-changing society. In his book The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida estimates that 30% of all jobs now require creative thinking, up ten-fold since 1900. And the percentage will undoubtedly continue to climb in the future.

Thursday, 29 January 2009

2.4 million more dangerous toys recalled

Federal safety regulators recalled an additional 2.4 million potentially deadly Mega Brands magnetic toys Monday, at least 14 months after learning there might be problems with some of those products.

In December 2006, a consumer complained to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that magnets could come loose from Mega Brands Magna-Man action figures, one of the toys recalled, according to government records. And last May a Tribune report, which featured an account of a magnet popping out of one of those action figures, questioned whether the company's earlier Magnetix recalls covered all of the potentially hazardous toys in the line.